Phil of the Future Double Keely
by Thor2000
Summary: After her mother embarrasses her, Keely uses the Wizard to create a clone of herself to be with her mother, but the clone starts thinking it is the real Keely.
1. Chapter 1

Keely Teslow walking down Decatur Street for the Diffy House was a bit of a hazard for the denizens of Pickford. She was a young beautiful teenager, but maybe a bit more attractive than she was aware of. Her long blonde hair bounced over the shoulders of her dark sweater and her feet danced with a regal air as men both young and old noticed her. Young boys of five and eight wanted to marry her while older men beyond her years wished they were young again but for the luxury of going to school with her. As parents feared what sort of beauty she was blossoming into, Keely's male peers looked with bitter jealous realizing she only had eyes for young and dashing Phil Diffy, another handsome young adult from H.G. Wells High School. As Keely advanced on the Diffy House, the twelve-year old paperboy mooned over her and slammed through a high hedge. Mr. Simms delivering merchandise to his retail store drive over an open manhole and smashed through the bus bench on the curb. Mrs. Anton began clobbering her husband for watching Keely vanish into the Diffy House. A fellow student named Perry Willows smashed his new car into Mr. Simms' truck while wondering why only good-looking people dated each other even as he considered himself a decent guy.

"Hi, Mr. Diffy." Keely entered the front hall of the Diffy House before Phil's father. "Is Phil ready for school?"

"Yeah," Lloyd was sipping a cup of Wizard-generated Martian coffee and gasping pleasingly from its taste. "He's still up in his room."

"Oh," Keely barely stepped forward then looked back. "Uh, you guys aren't upset that I stowed away in the time machine and ruined your chances of returning to your own time?"

"What? No…" Lloyd wanted to remove that thought from her mind. "I… I mean - we love it here. Barbara and I have never felt closer; Phil really loves being with you, and Pim… Well, Pim… You know, Pim, she really…" Lloyd started lightly breathing through his teeth. "I'd steer clear of her room if I was you."

"Check!" Keely mused and postured a bit with that suggestion. On the surface, the Diffys were the typical American family, but under it, there was a grand secret that only she was privy to under their roof. At first, it seemed impossible and incredibly unlikely that they were time-travelers stranded here from the future, but then she saw their gadgets from their time - wonderful gadgets yet to be invented for making life in the future more tolerable. The Wizard seemed to be some sort of data retrieving matter-manipulating creation that Phil often used as a phone or as a source for holograms. He had goggles that induced virtual-reality surroundings and an object called the transmorph for shapeshifting into other ages or different people, and then there was the hover-pod, an anti-gravity sled that could circumvent the planet. Keely wasn't sure how she avoided burning up in the friction at high speed, but Phil understood it. All the Diffys were blessed intellectually, but they were a bit ignorant with her turn-of-the-Twenty-first-century customs and traits. When Keely had first met Phil, he was stuck in clothes from the 1970s, but after soon after some initial reluctance and half-interested prodding, she had learned the truth. It was both fascinating and sometimes exciting even if she often forget how far ahead in time they had come from. While she often watched the Diffys muse confusingly over the barbecue and dishwasher, she realized what it might have been like if she was suddenly stranded in the Fifteenth or Seventeenth Centuries.

"Hey…" She looked up to Phil tying up his sneakers. "Got the cigarette box out. More money to get those tickets."

"Aly and AJ here we come." Phil grinned excited and reached under his mattress for the money they had been saving for the concert tickets. A few dollars here, a bill here, it was now adding up to get the tickets to see the teen singing stars. Aly and AJ were very big stars to them and something as iconic in Phil's memory of Twentieth Century celebrities. He'd never seen the series that Aly had done nor had he seen any of the eleven movies they were going to do, but through Keely, he had become quite a fan of their work.

"Now up to about three hundred and fifty," Phil added to their stash. "A bit more and I can score us backstage passes."

"Oh god, oh god!!!" Keely was getting excited at just the idea of meeting the sisters. "I can't wait. I've got so many questions for them! This is going to be so great!"

"Yeah!"

"You know, Phil," Keely lightly bit her lip and beamed a bit inflated with her own ego. "Some people have said I even look a bit like Alyson Michalka." Hearing that, Phil slowly lifted his head up to her disbelievingly.

"What?"

"No, I'm not kidding!" This was a big thing for Keely to be compared to a big time former Disney actress and now popular singing star. "I was over in Hansentown shopping and some kids my age came up to me and wanted my autograph! It was so cool!!!" She was grinning and cheering for herself with wide-open hand gestures. "I mean, look at me with my head up, don't you think I look exactly like her! Just picture me with my hair as long as her!"

"Maybe you have a…" Phil just didn't see it, but he couldn't break her heart. "Passing similarity."

"Phil…" Keely was feeling her emotional bubble busted. "Come on, okay, let me borrow that transmorph thing of yours to increase the length of my hair. I swear, you'll think I was her."

"You know, Keely," Phil lifted his pack up to the corner of his desk and began zipping it up. "Sometimes I think you only like me for my future gadgets."

"Phil, that's so totally not true!" Keely tried to keep her patience with him and tried appealing to his ego. "Why I bet with you by my side, someone might think you're that Nicky Ruleman."

"His name is Ricky Ullman." It scared Phil a bit that he even knew that. "Keely, the transmorph isn't meant to be a toy."

"You've used it for far less." Keely pointed out.

"Yeah," Phil reared up his pack to his shoulder. "But we got to get to school. It'd take me too much time to show you how to work it." He advanced on her thinking she was right behind him, but Keely instead had other ideas. She'd used his other gadgets before under times of duress. How hard could it be?

"I swear," She picked the transmorph up out of a bedside drawer. "Sometimes, he just frustrates me…" She glanced over the settings, twisted a dial a second and looked for Phil to keep from being surprised. He was already down the hall and heading down the stairs. As Phil's feet pounded the wood steps, his mother looked up from the kitchen to wish him luck in school. Lloyd was earning extra cash by doing repair work on a neighbor's toaster at the table.

"I'm gone with Keely." Phil waved back to his parents and then noticed he was Keely-less. Looking back for her behind him, his ears instead heard the sound of cracking and crunching. In the ceiling of the living room, several cracks streaked outward from the center dropping dust and pieces of drywall. A later ceiling chunk hit the coffee table and the overhead support beams groaned over their heads as a terrific weight filled the upstairs.

"Oh no," Barbara Diffy fretted over her clean house. "Lloyd, get Curtis. Those time machine parts stored in Phil's room exploded again!"

"They couldn't have!!" Lloyd responded slowly perplexed. "I stored them in the attic!"

Dropping his pack, Phil was rushing to see the damage to his room. He was hoping his drum set had escaped damage and prayed it would not be a repeat of him living with their pet caveman in the garage. Bounding up the front stairs, he rounded around the top banister and slid to a stop. The entire second floor had warped under the stress impact occurring in his room. He came to a stop and stood in his doorway and looked up and then up again. His face was oddly complacent to what he was looking at. He should have been upset, but it actually more of his typical response to the sort of things he experienced living in this century.

Keely's head turned distractedly realizing she was being watched and what had happened. The room hadn't shrunk around her; she had been increased in size. Instead of giving herself longer flowing locks, she had increased all of herself to somewhere around eighteen to twenty feet tall. Confined in Phil's room, she was sitting on the far side of the room with her back bent down and her head down between her knees. Her pole-sized left arm was pinned under her legs as her right hand felt around for the transmorph knocked from her hands to the floor. Her perfect features scowled embarrassingly and grunted as her head rubbed against the light fixture in her hair. Phil just looked up at her trying not to be an "I-told-you-so" but he had told her not to try using the transmorph.

"You do remind me of someone." He finally cracked half-serious. "Alice in Wonderland - Through the Looking Glass." He referred to the scene in the Lewis Carroll novella where Alice had grown from the magic cookies.

"Step over here and say that…." Keely mumbled rolling her eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

"It never fails…" Principal Neil Hackett whipped his bathrobe on over his body and hastened for the front door. "As soon as I stick a foot in the bath, someone comes to the door." His tiny dog, Roswell, was perched on the edge of the sofa watching syndicated episodes of "The X-Files," but it looked up to muse unconsciously on the sight of his master with those skinny legs sticking out from under that robe and up to that bathing cap on the bald head on top. Securing his robe tightly, Hackett peeked out of house first and looked to his front stoop. A deep groaning sound from his lips, he turned round securing his robe and reached to the door, grasping and turning the doorknob in one gesture and pulling the door open.

"Hello there, Principal Hackett…" Clad in a pink sweater and black denim jeans, Pim Diffy looked up to him from the front stoop of his house with a sunny disposition and wide grin as her façade to the unethical corruption in her soul. "I'm going door-to-door reminding people that not all of us have things as good off as others. You know, more than eighty-five percent of the country is so poor that they do not even have Cable TV, computers or Internet in their homes. Majorities of people do not even have cell phones or medical insurance to go see the doctor or even surface-to-air missiles or even any of that neat stuff. I am asking good people like you to open your hearts and wallets…"

"Come on, come on, speed it up…" Hackett twirled his finger to speed Pim along. "I want to see 'The Emperor's New Groove' on TV before I have to be at school."

"Principal Hackett," Pim pulled out her metal coffee can. It was painted white and had the letters P-I-M on it in large red letters. "Could you give to The People In Mortality fund? It's a society that takes care of widows and orphans in need of…"

"Pim," Hackett tightened his robe to keep from being branded a degenerate. "Don't you recall? I already gave you twenty dollars for your charity yesterday, and…" He realized what the letters in People In Mortality stood for. "Wait a second, is this a scam to save money for you to get tickets to that Aly and AJ concert?"

"Like I care about a pair of twins who can't sing a note?" Pim was always confusing the two girls with the Olsen twins. "They're horrible, and that TV series was even worse…. Well, except for the little sister who was kind of cool…" She lifted up her donation can. "It's such a worthy charity…" She made a face of harmless innocence.

"Well," Hackett reached to his change tray on the shelf by the inside of the front door. "I guess I can give another five dollars."

"Only five…?" Pim reacted with her voice climbing higher and her face even more pathetic.

"I think I got a ten dollar bill…"

"Only ten…?"

"Hey, why don't I dump all I got into your can?!" Hackett lost his temper and poured several weeks of loose change and small bills into her can. Coins bounced off the rim and rolled off the porch. One bill floated partially away to be snapped up by Pim while a Canadian quarter made a klunk in the bottom. Pim was suddenly very happy and ecstatic at how heavy her can was becoming.

"Mr. Hackett," Pim wiped away a few crocodile tears. "You are a beautiful human being."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah…" Hackett mumbled sarcastically under his impatient breath. "If I miss Cusco open the show, I'm going to be pretty teed off young lady." He gripped the front of his robe and slammed the door shut.

"You didn't shrink me back all the way!" A few blocks over, Keely walked with Phil into Herbert George Wells High School while looking at her hands self-consciously and looking down at the floor around her. "I don't think I was this tall before. Someone is going to notice."

"Look, Allison Hayes," Phil had sarcastically nick-named her after the female actress from the 1958 classic, "_Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman._" "I told you not to play with the transmorph, and you nearly blew up the house. Not to mention you crushed my drums, my bed, my nightstand, my clock… Thank god, my Wizard is stress tested up to fifty tons. Just be grateful the military wasn't called out before you went crashing through the town!"

"Hey, Keely, looking good!" Seth Washmer wandered past through the passing throngs of students.

"I am taller!!!" Keely looked at Phil with abject fear and paranoia.

"Look, Keely," Phil rolled his eyes as he came to his locker, swung out his shelf and prepared his usual crackers and cheese. "You're experiencing reverse-vertigo. It comes from going to normal height from a great height. All I did was hit the reset and you went back to your original height, but next time, when I tell you not to play with…"

"Your gadgets, I won't play with your gadgets." Keely answered in sync with Phil's exact words in perfect unison.

"Hi, honey!"

Students and faculty turned to the sound of the voice calling above the volume of all the others. It was Keely's mother, Mandy Teslow, with the voice of a Simpsons cartoon character. Her voice was in high decibel as it ricocheted off the school walls around laughing students. Some of Keely and Phil's peers were glad they didn't have a parent that embarrassing while others started laughing and poking fingers to make fun of Keely for having a mom with that cartoon voice.

"Mrs. Teslow." Seth Washmer had stepped back to meet Keely's mom. "Can you say out loud for me, "Don't have a cow?"

"What a strange and weird young man." Mrs. Keely didn't get the reference and instead passed on the notion. Turned down, Seth made a face of confusion and went on his way.

"Can you do something about her embarrassing me?!" Keely turned to Phil.

"Hey honey…" Mandy Teslow kissed her daughter. "You left so fast that you didn't get your lunch." She lifted and shook the paper bag. "Tofu sandwich and alfalfa salad."

"I can see why she left it." Phil mumbled under breath before Keely poked him.

"Honey," Mandy beamed over her only daughter, the only good thing to come out of a brief marriage to a philandering husband. "I am so looking forward to our shopping trip this afternoon. You know, we get so little time together now that you and Phil are… well, you know… a couple."

"Mom…" Keely was mortified realizing her peers and classmates considered her mother talking to her to be a humorous incident.

"Oh please…" Mandy looked around the crowd of young adults moving past. "Like any of these kids don't have parents."

"Heck, some of them are parents." Phil mumbled under breath thinking of at least one school cheerleader and two of the geeks in the science club.

"Honey, I'll pick you up to go shopping right after school." Mandy squealed in delight as a warning school bell rang. "In fact, Phil can come along too if he likes. Why I bet by the end of the day, he could be calling me mom too!" She giggled her quirky cartoonish chuckle. "It'll only be a matter of time before you two make it official!"

"Mom!!!!" Keely's eyes glazed over and she spun around trying to look away. Her legs were buckling in embarrassment and her emotional pressure was hitting its zenith.

"I love you too." Mandy pinched her daughter's cheek and kissed it. "Are you getting taller?!" Keely shot a look at Phil as Mandy beamed and stood in indefinite love for her daughter. A brief sigh, a light gasp and Mandy Teslow was on her way toward the front entrance. Watching her finally depart was a load off Keely's socially pressed ego, but she still groaned out loud as Phil closed her locker while gobbling up his last cheese cracker.

"I don't want to go shopping with her." Keely's shoulders drooped and her head hung low as she scuffed her feet walking and talking to her first class with Phil walking with her on her left side. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I love her, but… I don't want to be around her all the time."

"I know what you mean." Phil sympathized. "I recall once my mom took me to that large flat building with all the stores…"

"You mean the mall."

"Yeah, the mall," Phil continued. "I wanted this really cool suede leather jacket with faux fur lining, and she came rushing up to me with…"

"Phil, this is about me." Keely interrupted his story. "I don't want to let my mom down, but I don't want to go shopping with her. I'm not a little girl anymore. I have gone shopping by myself. I can do it without her. If only there was some way I could send someone else like me…" Keely stopped a mere few feet from Messerschmidt's algebra classroom. "Phil, did you bring your Wizard with you to school?"

"Well, yeah, I always bring it with…" Phil was suddenly aware of her thoughts. "No. Keely, I was talking about this just this morning. You have become so dependant on my future gadgets for solving your problems that you don't even try anymore. You have to deal with your mom yourself."

"Oh, come on, Phil." Keely realized again times he had used it for far less. "You once used a replicant of me to blow off Mia."

"Well, yeah…" Phil recalled that.

"And I know you once created a replicant of me to stay the night with you." Keely added another example.

"Yeah, but… wait a second…" Phil did a double take. "I never did that." He looked back at her, but she just gave him a long knowing gaze. "I didn't." He insisted, but Keely continued looking at him as if she knew he had done so. "Okay, I once considered it, but the point is that I didn't do it because I knew it was wrong, and so is this. The Wizard is not a tool for deceiving one's parents."

"Yet, that's all Pim ever does with hers." Keely pointed out.

"More proof that it's wrong." Phil pointed out. "No, Keely. I'm sorry, but if our relationship means anything to you, you have to prove to me that I'm more to you than my gadgets. I'm cutting you off." He turned to the classroom only to look up to the tall, intimidating presence of a man whose shadow reached over him as a German invasion force crushing everything before it.

"Any time, street urchins…" Messerschmidt was waiting.

Phil and Keely rolled their eyes separately and squeezed past him into the room and took their usual seats. Dropping her purse and taking out her notebook and binder, Keely looked to Phil to acknowledge him and then panned down to the nip of his Wizard partially obscured in his open backpack sitting open on the floor. It was right there. She could grab it if she wanted, but she staved off that compulsion for now. She and Phil had four out of seven classes together through the day. Last period was Philosophy with Mrs. Simms. Phil was the only person Mrs. Simms trusted to leave the room and return to class before the final bell, and that gave Keely several chances to lift the Wizard. By the end of the day, Phil would not be guarding the Wizard, plus she knew that Mrs. Simms would let her leave class early to cover the closing announcements in the office. After that, Keely could just return the Wizard at any time. She just had to take a side trip to the ladies room, which was always empty before the dismissal bell. It was a perfect plan free of any problems.

"Okay," Keely braced herself, aimed the Wizard upon herself and felt the tickle of electrically-charged particles of plasma bouncing off her from the scan. It kind of felt like what she expected a low-wattage electrical bath would feel like. After scanning herself from the tip of her head to her toes, she turned the device to the empty corner of the room and clenched her finger determinedly on the button underneath and watched as ambient room particles, dimensional matter and electronic signatures formed a mindless replicant of herself from a cursory scan of herself and a basic memory composition of the human genome. Like Phil had once told her, it was less than cloning but closer to being a solid thinking hologram with a pre-programmed mind set. Once formed, the replicant had limited awareness and the intelligence level of an infant. The Keely clone reacted with short head turns absorbing data from around her until she had enough knowledge to be aware of concepts.

"Okay," Keely tucked Phil's Wizard to her purse and looked out into the empty school hall. "I'm sending you shopping with my mom."

"I like shopping." The replicant was struggling to form thoughts.

"Yeah," Keely realized then how upset Phil would be if, change that, when he found out. "Just don't do anything stupid around my mom. Be careful."

"I like your mom." The replicant replied. "I like your clothes. How do they taste?"

"My mom is going to think I'm an idiot." Keely was stressing already. "I'm going to have a lot of questions if I pull this off. Please, please don't say stuff like that. All you got to know when shopping with my mom is "how does it look?," "how much is it?," and "does it fit?," Got it?"

"I'm going shopping!" The replicant grinned vacuously.

"The things I do to avoid my mother." Keely told herself, looked out and saw her mother coming down the hall looking for her. Hoping she had seen her first, she pushed her clone out ahead of her. The replicant stumbled partially a bit bewilderedly and confused and looked back to the ladies room as the door closed against it. Keely just huddled behind the door hiding and listening as she hoped the replicant did what it was meant to and left with her mother.

"Keely, honey," Mandy Teslow found the image of her daughter already in the hall. "You didn't have to come looking for me. I'd have found you."

"I love shopping!" The replicant answered ecstatically as the true Keely groaned in hiding at the simplicity of its comments.

"I know you do, honey." Mandy answered under the screaming dismissal bell over their heads. The replicant reacted afraid and scared from the sound but felt assured near the mature Mrs. Teslow. "Oh, we're going to have so much fun!" The hall was getting full of racing students, classmates rushing to lockers and the sounds of cries and cheers. One female student rushing into the restroom nearly revealed the true Keely Teslow hiding at the door, but a crowd of football players blocked Mandy's image of her sudden twins.

"I guess we better get going before we get crushed." Mandy tugged at her daughter's hand to escape this teenage wasteland.

"I'm going shopping!!!" The replicant cheered out loud as a few classmates and peers wished her goodbye. In the wake of that madness, the real Keely Teslow slipped out while watching from the restroom and gripping her purse then bolted around Lily Foster and Tricia Hall of the cheerleaders and Grady Spaggett of the Science Club in a mad dash into the other direction for Mrs. Simms' room. Veering around Seth Tanner and Will Samms with her purse swaying off her shoulder, she screeched to a stop into the room at Phil collecting his things at his desk. Mrs. Simms was erasing the board as she studied her next day's assignments. Keely's breath was racing and her heart was pumping fast as she braced herself on Phil's desk with her left hand holding her up and her blonde locks swaying before her perfect facial features.

"What took you so long getting back?" Phil asked her out loud.

"Traffic…" Keely choked out partially telling the truth.

"I thought it took you…" He suddenly realized he was missing something from his pack. His Wizard! Where was it?! When did he last use it?! His own heart beat quickened and his eyes rounded in fear. The last time he had lost it was almost a disaster, but he had learned from that incident and now had a backup plan less convoluted than masquerading as an extra-terrestrial. "My Wizard?" He noticed his teacher and then lowered his voice for Keely. "Keely, I can't find my Wizard."

"You can't?" Keely sounded surprised and innocent as she pulled Phil's pack close to hide her left hand reaching into her purse and palming the missing gadget. "Well, it must be somewhere…" She blinded Phil's view with his own textbook and whipped out his Wizard with her other hand. "Here it is!!! Phil, I swear… sometimes you're so distracted."

"Yeah," Phil grimaced awkwardly and began returning his things to his pack that Keely had removed. "For a split second, just a split second, I thought you might have taken it…"

"Oh, Phil…."

"What did you finally do with your mom?" Phil zipped his pack closed with his Wizard inside.

"Oh," Keely was not expecting that query and realized she actually now had to lie. "I, um, called her after lunch and said that, uh, you were taking me to the movies and if we could do it another day."

"Sounds good…" Phil looked upon her as a guy with a girl he loved than the old buddy they once were. "What movie do you want to see?"

"How about that new Ben Stiller flick…." Keely hoped nothing went wrong in this scheme.


	3. Chapter 3

PART THREE

Pickford didn't have a mall, but south of town on the way to Danbury, the county seat, was the Riverside Mall, a massive structure that looked like an "X" from the air. Almost two-hundred and fifty stores and assorted restraunts, everyone in the number of surrounding small towns came here for their major shopping needs. Monica Teslow was a little girl when it was built, and she had memories of driving up here with her parents. Before that, it was the Old Henderson Farm. Pickford had pictures of the old structures that once stood on the property and the Old Henderson House still stood on the rocky bluff overlooking the asphalt parking lot and lanes where cows and horses once roamed. The mall had a theatre complex on one of its points and a restaurant on another. A two story J. C. Penney store was at another point while a food court rested at the main access at the opposing end. It was here that skateboarders rode down the escalators and mall cops chased punks for spitting off the top floor balcony. In the center, a large fountain sprayed water a third of the way up to the domed glass roof over benches and plants. It was the hub of the mall and a place for boys to ogle and chase girls, for weary husbands toting the bags of their wives and a place where a hapless shoe man waded through the fountain for enough loose change to buy lunch from the hot dog vendor.

Upon arrival through the J.C. Penney, Mandy Teslow took her daughter straight for the women's clothing and they wooed and awed over the dresses and giggled a bit at the lingerie. Twelve blouses, seven slacks, two sweaters, five pairs of shoes and an evening dress later, they were in the dress shop pretending to be fashion models. For some reason or another, Keely was a bit out of it mistaking manikins for employees and wearing bras over her sweater. Mandy just attributed it to her daughter's sense of humor. Scented candles in another store display brought memories of a story when Keely was a little girl; a story Mandy wanted to retell to her daughter. Keely would listen carefully and then became as distracted as a child by the pet store. Unwilling to buy the python or the chimp for her daughter, Mandy Teslow then decided it was time to go off to look at jewelry where Keely was hypnotized by the sparking lights. Mandy just took a moment to inquire about a watch and Keely was wandering off to Guns and Ammo. At the men's wear place, Mandy guessed on Phil's size that Keely could get him dress shirts as a gift. Seven more blouses, seven more skirts, three leotards, five pairs of tights, eight scarves, a pair of lambskin boots and a motley collection of ladies underwear later, it was practically dinnertime. Keely had listened to the stories of her past and youth, of her mother's childhood, her family tree and of old Pickford forty years prior and was more of herself – observant, reliable and spirited.

"Isn't this fun, honey?" Mandy looked back at her daughter to show her a peach and lime-green dress. "And you thought you wouldn't like shopping."

"I like shopping." The replicant repeated herself. Mandy just took a pause to look her Keely over and took a deep breath. Her daughter was usually a bit more versatile and out-spoken than that, but now she was practically stuck with the mentality of a first-grader. At first, she had thought Keely was being sarcastic and trying to rebel against her by pretending to be a mindless zombie to her will, but she had never carried the act on for this long. It just started wondering if this was something else she had never yet noticed about her daughter.

"I've really should have put you through remedial school when I had the chance." Her head lightly nodded as she looked past Keely to the Cheese Hut. The young lady out front collecting and replacing the donation can for an empty one looked exactly like Phil's sister Pim. The petite and opportunistic girl looked like an angel with innocent features and blonde California heritage. With a little effort and modest makeup, young Pim could have been a young beauty herself, but beneath that innocent act was the personality of a dishonest used car salesman, the ferocity of a career con man and the covert attitude of a rogue espionage agent. Mandy liked Pim as a young girl needing guidance, but she didn't entirely trust the girl.

"Well," Mandy beamed trying to be cordial to her. "If it isn't Phil Diffy's little sister. Fancy meeting you here, Pim."

"Why Mrs. Teslow as I live and breath…" Pim's face alighted with her usual fake charm and insincere greeting. "I don't believe you have given to my People In Mortality charity. I'm donating everything I get to the victims of Hurricane Katrina by way of the Personal Involvement Mission. We are really dedicated to helping others."

"Yeah, right…" Keely looked away rolling her eyes.

"What was that?" Pim partially heard that mumble.

"Nothing."

"Why it sounds like such a worthy charity…" Mandy Teslow grinned feeling charitable and dropped her shopping bags to pull her purse before her and open it. A little poking and stirring in her accessories and she lifted her head back up to Pim. "Oh, I'm sorry, honey, I don't have any cash on me. Well, if you come by the house tomorrow, I'll write you a nice check."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Mrs. Teslow," Pim raised her eyebrows earnestly intrigued. "I'm not allowed to take checks. Cash only."

"I understand." Mandy stood by Keely in the walkway alongside the stores with people passing by and teenagers rolling by on boards. "I'll have some cash ready for you tomorrow." She looked to Keely staring distrustfully at Pim with eyes narrowed and arms folded before her heavy suspicion. "And you're always telling me how horrible she is. Pim surely seems like a very giving and nurturing person." Mandy turned back to Pim as Keely scoffed disgustedly.

"Pim," Mandy continued. "We need more people like you in this world. If we could all be as giving and charitable, I bet this could be the most perfect and giving planet on earth. My heart is full of happiness knowing there are decent people like ourselves in this world."

"I know what you mean." Pim shined her fake grin as Keely recollected her bags and departed with her mother away from her. Heading down the other way, she wrestled with placing her full donation can in a pack on her shoulder and taking out a full one. "One year of her as an in-law and I bet my brother will be hitting the road…" She cackled out loud as her true self emerged and then turned on her way to hustle the theater patrons coming out of the cinema house. A few departing moviegoers didn't notice her while a few ignored her altogether. Hoping to get a few dollars before security chased her off, Pim pointed her donation can to everyone she could and hastened over to the other doors of another emptying seating area. Through the assorted patrons, adults, kids and mall rats was a face she knew, but it was the person he was with that made her stop and take notice. Looking back confusingly into the direction that Mrs. Teslow and Keely had departed, Pim turned back to the emptying auditorium and her idiot brother and the dumb blonde he associated with.

"Pim," Phil popped some popcorn into his mouth as he and Keely approached his sister and noticed her donation can. "I thought dad convinced you that collecting money under false pretenses was wrong."

"Keely?" Pim stopped confused and perplexed and looked back the way she had come. Something was wrong here; what was it?

"Yeah, Keely, my girlfriend." Phil reacted with amusement over his sister's reaction. "You met her several times, you once tried to profit off her. You once impersonated her to get a guy to like you. You once turned her into a guy…."

"Yeah, but…" Pim was looking around for Rod Serling to pop out and introduce the Twilight Zone. "Didn't I just see you a few minutes ago with your mother?"

Keely's eyes went wide and she choked on the soda from her straw.

"No, no, you didn't…" She started freaking. "You must have seen my… uh, cousin, Alyson, yeah, that's it. She, I mean, we…"

"Wait a second…" Phil started unconsciously putting events together into a story of deceit and subterfuge. "Pim, could you leave us alone a second?"

"Oh," Pim didn't need to know more. She knew she'd know about it later. "Looks like trouble in paradise. Blondie's been doing a bit of lying herself." She shook her container of cash and cackled out loud loving this turn of events in the romance of her brother and his girlfriend. Keely just continued sipping her soda and pretending to be distracted as Phil set aside their box of popcorn from the movie and disgustedly and angrily folded his arms across his chest.

"Keely Esmerelda Teslow…" He started. "You did steal my Wizard and you did make a replicant of yourself. You even lied about it to me! How could you?! I guess our relationship doesn't mean anything to you!!!"

"No, Phil, that's not true!!!" Keely lowered her drink. "I do love you and I'd do anything for you, but… you had me backed to a corner. I really would have called my mom off, but I couldn't take the risk of hurting her feelings."

"But you hurt me!" Phil was depressingly upset. "I really am nothing but an answer to your problems!!! Something goes wrong, use the Wizard! Things get in the way, use the Wizard! Pim makes you a hunchback, use the Wizard!"

"Phil…." Keely was heart-struck realizing what she had done.

"Keely," Phil sounded a bit forgiving, but there was still a sense of hurt emotion in his voice. "If your mother loves you as much as I do, she would have understood. She might have been hurt, but she would have understood, but you deceived me. It will take me a while to get over that."

"I'll do anything to get that trust back." Keely's face was repentant before it lowered in disgraced silence against the breaking of her heart.

"Right now," Phil took her soda, sipped it and grimaced realizing it was Diet Pepsi before giving it back. "We got to clean up your mess. Let's find your mom and the replicant then decide what we have to do…" He took her hand and led the way toward the end of the mall where all the better garment stores were located, but down the other way of the massive fortress of businesses and markets was the food court where many more of the mall shoppers gathered. There was a taco court and a Chinese front as well as a candy store where kids ordered everything from Wonka bars to Pickford Candy Apples. The Health Food court did decent business as well as the Beefy Burger with its giant burgers and large onion rings. Seats varied from marble benches and tables to mounted seats and booths and the patrons varied from the elderly musing on the changing world to the younger generation taking advantage of it. Without restraints, several male skateboarders scuffed and crashed off the escalator while other young adults were pointed toward their moral compass by parents directing their lives.

"You know, honey," Mandy sat on a bench outside the indoor Burger King restaurant and prompted Keely to sit by her. With this form of her daughter sitting by her, the mother became introspective and seriously maternal. "I know I'm embarrassing you a lot these days, but you just have to understand that with you and Phil now an item that I'm seeing you a lot less now."

"I love Phil." Keely announced believing it.

"I know, honey." Mandy continued. "You see, as Phil and you keep getting closer, you're going to be pulling away from me, and we're going to have even more little time together. Our time together is getting smaller and smaller and I'm trying to make the most of what little time we have left. Pretty soon, you and Phil will be thinking of marriage and children and the future and then you'll be looking back on your life and, well, I won't be around anymore. Your life is changing, sweetheart, and you won't have time for me anymore."

"I love you, mom." Keely looked to her mother with her lip quivering and her eyes welling with tears.

"And I love you too, baby..." Mother hugged daughter. "Phil is such a good young man, and I know he'll take such good care of you. Your father left us with so little and to think you can rise so far above it is all I can hope for." Mandy pulled Keely even tighter. "You will always be my daughter, and I will love you even when I'm gone."

"I love you so much, mom." Keely was crying down her face and holding back her emotions. Looking around the mall and upper stories, something sounded in her brain and she felt scared, upset and heart-broken all at once. She had realized an epiphany, a mere spark of a memory in her mind, and she realized that her life was changing. Her life was changing, and she was no longer a girl, but a young woman. Shaking in her mother's arms, she tried composing her shaking hands and trembling head. "What's happening to me?" She asked herself.


	4. Chapter 4

PART FOUR

On the return trip home, Mandy Teslow waxed nostalgic at the sight of her own past at Herbert George Wells High School and looked over to Keely in the passenger seat by her. Her daughter had become quiet since leaving the mall. Usually extroverted and out-going, Keely was sitting with her head propped up on her elbow resting on the door. The breeze rushing through the car was pouring over her swaying locks and pensive mood. Her eyes blinked several times from the breeze to her face and she lightly sighed under breath thinking about Phil.

"Honey," Mandy beamed happily from her day to her daughter. "Did you have a good day?"

"Great day…" Keely slightly beamed a bit covertly.

"You're thinking about Phil, aren't you?" Mandy turned her car off Main Street and down Simpson Street to their neighborhood.

"Am I that obvious…" Keely answered realizing how transparent she had been.

"Why don't I let you off here?" Mandy Teslow pressed the brake of her Accord to slow toward the bus stop at the end of Decatur Street. "I'll see you later tonight after you've been with Phil." The car rolled hesitantly to a stop as daughter looked to mother.

"Thank you, mom." Keely opened her car door and hopped out of it.

"I love you too, honey." Mandy beamed with motherly love and parental satisfaction out the passenger side window. The last thing she saw was Keely with her heart-felt smile; her left hand to her heart and the fingers of her right hand waving good-by to her mother as chimes in a breeze. Her mother's car on its way home, Keely dashed off with a gleeful dance in her step to hurry to Phil. Behind her, Mr. Collins from the local vegetable store drove by in his white truck through the Simpson and Decatur Street intersection for town. Driving a silver hatchback, Mrs. Buckner turned off Simpson on to Decatur heading home and Greg Haskell, a local college student, got into his purple Camaro with Lisa Ullman, his date for the evening. They backed out from the driveway of his parents' house just as the transit bus came down the street and stopped at the bench on the corner. Phil Diffy and Keely Teslow were the only passengers disembarking from the bus to return home from the mall. Keely appeared over-wrought and distressed while Phil remained in charge tossing his pack over his shoulder and looking up and down the street.

"She wasn't at the school…" He exhaled tiredly from their running around and watched the bus pull away down Simpson Street.

"Phil, I'm so sorry…" Keely was tearing herself up inside. "I should have told her to come back to the school and wait for us. I have no idea where she is."

"Don't worry – we'll find her." Phil tried to calm her by briefly embracing her and giving her mental support. "We've been through worse." He got her to relax and trust him. "Look, she had to have gone home with your mother or been dropped off at my house."

"How do you rationalize that?"

"Your mother is always dropping you off at my house."

"Right." Keely agreed with him.

"I'll go home and see if your replicant is there," Phil tugged on his pack as he turned to the direction of his house. "But you also go home and look to see if it is there."

"Right, then what?"

"Bring it to my house, but don't let your mother see the two of you together." Phil turned and explained it to her.

"Okay," Keely started to turn away then turned back to Phil. "Why don't I just take your Wizard with me and take care of it myself?"

"Do you really want to go there?" Phil wasn't letting her loose with a Wizard.

"Forget I said that." Keely turned and bolted for the alleyway between the houses linking Decatur and Mission Street. Phil was finding his life here in the Twentieth Century more complicated than life in the Twenty-Second Century. Back in his native century, all he ever did was hang out at the Lunar Pizza Hut in orbit and watch girls and try to get them to go out with him. Of course, none of those genetically pure and DNA-enhanced teenage girls could hold a candle to Keely whose own foibles and pursuits made her all the more enchanting. Running down the oak-lined sidewalk toward his house, he vaulted with the gusto of a young athlete over the Clavin's short hedge next door then jumped on to his front porch and started into the house to lose his pack and take out the Wizard that had started this minor disaster. Pushing the front door shut behind him, he looked back briefly to see Keely returning to meet him. She stopped the door from hitting her square to the face, caught it in her right hand and then turned to face Phil.

"Keely," Phil looked at her. "Did you find your replicant yet?"

"What? Um, uh, no……." Her eyes started rolling back and forth wondering how to answer that. "Have you seen her?'

"You haven't found it? Keely…" Phil had his Wizard ready to destroy it. "We can't let it run around loose. It would be dangerous if she got loose." His head next turned to the direction of Pim in the kitchen beyond the den stuffing a cookie can with wads of $50, $20 and $10 bills along with assorted change. It was a nice little scam she had created and it was becoming quite profitable, but she wasn't satisfied yet. It wasn't nearly enough for a potential young terrorist to buy her own island to start her own country and take over the world. She needed much more. Her only worry was that her parents would find her booty before her plans came to fruition and they'd want to spend it foolishly on rent, college, health insurance or, gasp, even charity.

"So that's where you're hiding it?" Phil looked over to her. "Aren't you afraid that Keely or I could steal it?"

"You two?" Pim scoffed at the thought. "Please, you too are so noble that you make Donny and Marie look like terrorists"

"Yeah…" Phil stood annoyed at that sarcastic remark then turned back to Keely. "Look, Keely, your replicant wasn't at the mall or back at the school. Head back to your house and wait for her…"

"Right!" Keely turned to rush out.

"But don't let your mom see the two of you at the same time!"

"Right!"

"Mom!" Two streets over and seven houses up, another Keely Teslow vaulted over her mother's lawn ornaments and nearly tripped over a plastic gnome. Her mother looked up at with four bags of clothing from the mall and five more in the car.

"Keely, honey…" Mandy Teslow shined toward her daughter. "I said you could go be with Phil; what are you doing here?"

"With Phil?" Keely gasped with her heart pumping against her chest. "I, uh, just wanted to say, I love you!"

"I love you too, honey." Mother and daughter hugged just before Keely beamed warmly insane for a minute and dashed back to Phil's house. Mandy Teslow looked back to her daughter make a racing jump over her hydrangeas and a leap off the retaining wall before the house and then charge back to Phil's house. Pausing with shopping bags on her front porch, she wondered what she was missing and started thinking back about her daughter's life.

"Maybe I shouldn't have smoked cigarettes when I was pregnant with her." She asked herself.

On Mission Street between Decatur and Colonial, Owen Tanner lived in a two-story frame house with his parents and two sisters. Lisa Tanner was eight and Dakota Tanner was five and neither of them did a lot of chores. That left him to carry out the trash and mow the yard himself. Having raked the yard and stuffed the leaves in a bag, he was nearing completion but for leaving the trash on the curb. The plastic bag tied shut; he heaved it up and left it at the curb for the trash man. Looking up, he saw Keely running toward him from the direction of Phil's house beyond the Brady house.

"Hey, Keely, looking good!" He called to her.

"Hey, Owen!!" She waved to him, jogged across the street and between two houses for a tree line toward her own house. A bit jealous at Phil for having a girl like Keely, Owen turned and collected the rake and shovel from his work. They were usually kept in the shed at the end of the driveway, but as he unlocked the shed, he looked up to see Keely racing through the alley behind his house heading to Phil's house.

"Hey, Keely, looking… what the??" He did a double take and wondered how she got behind him so fast.

"Hey, Owen!!" She waved to him, jogged between two houses and vanished around the Cole's enclosed swimming pool. Behind her, she left Owen confused and perplexed. The rake and shovel hit the yard at his feet as he scratched his head, looked to the Teslow House beyond the trees and then to the trees in the Diffy yard over the Cole House. What was going on here?!

"I think I ought to stop smoking pot." He told himself. "It really does destroy brain cells."

"Owen Herschel Tanner!!!" His father screamed from the house. "What is this stuff your sister found under your mattress?!!!"

"Mom, I…" Emerging from her back yard, Keely Teslow once again limped to a stop, hung herself over her front porch and draped her body over the railing of her front porch while lifting her head up exhaustedly to her mother.

"Keely, for the last time…" Mandy Teslow looked up disbelievingly. "Go be with Phil; we've spent enough time together. This is your Phil time. I can get our shopping into the house."

"Be with Phil." Keely moaned tiredly and heaved her body back up to her feet. She deserved this. She had created that replicant and it was all coming back to hit her. She was paying a price for using the Wizard and this was it. Beaming and nodding her head insanely, she knew she was going mad and dragged herself along the shingles on the side of her house to race back to Phil.

"Maybe I shouldn't have been drinking vodka when I was pregnant either." Mandy Teslow watched her daughter vanish around the house.

"Phil…" Another Keely was almost crawling as she returned to the Diffy House. Her feet were like lead weights, her long legs were soft spaghetti and her head was swimming. Limping tiredly in through the front door, she braced her body on the banister and began crawling up the stairs to Phil's room to look for him.

"Keely?" Barbara Diffy found the prostrate beauty crawling over the threshold of her bedroom to reach Phil. "Honey, are you alright?"

"Must… reach…" Keely's head lifted up to Phil rushing from his room to support her. "Phil…"

"Keely!!" Phil held Keely close and felt her breathing on his neck and her weak arms trying to hold on to him. Her eyes were fluttering, her heart was pounding and her body as limp as a rag doll. The running had her about to collapse. Phil held her close trying to help her and kissed her neck to share his caring nature with her. "Did you find her?"

"Here, Keely…" Barbara took from her pocket a square metal tin with candy in it. "Honey, these are vitamin pills; I take them whenever I'm jogging. They'll help you get your energy back." She took two of the pills in the palm of her hand and showed them to Keely. They looked like tic-tacks. Phil helped support her as Keely took both the pills in her fingers and popped both pills into her mouth and started crunching them in her teeth. They did taste like candy, but they also fizzed like minty carbonated treats.

"Dare I ask…" Barbara shifted her weight to Phil. "What's going on here?"

"Keely created a replicant of herself with the Wizard…" Phil broke with a harmless grin. "And now we can't find it."

"Oh my stars and garters!!!" Barbara jumped back from the upstairs landing holding her chest. "Phil, we got to find that replicant!!!" She paused and screeched out louder than before. "Lloyd!!!!"

Lloyd's head turned to sound of his wife's voice from the house after emerging from the time machine in the driveway. The outward look and shape of the future vehicle was oddly reminiscent of a modern recreational device. There were a few odd external connections, but they weren't unique enough to ward or merit attention. Taking the time to lock the door to keep out the curious and the dishonest, Lloyd focused unerringly on locking his family's potential ride home and turned to head back into the house. As he turned, Keely appeared at the end of the driveway about to collapse and braced herself on the exterior of the time machine. Backing against the future vehicle, her sweat-filled bodice heaved up and down trying to catch her breath. Her usually perfect hair was askew and mussed as if she had combed it with an eggbeater. She had tossed her sweater off in the hedge behind her house and her t-shirt was now stained with a deep wide pool of perspiration. Gasping and groaning, she looked up to Phil's father about to pass out.

"Keely," Lloyd started fishing into his pocket. "You didn't need to run. We're not leaving this century right now. Here…" He pulled out a small round metal tin. "Take one of these oxygen pills. I take them for energy whenever I feel tired from working on the time machine. They're perfectly harmless."

"Mr. Diffy…" Keely popped the two pills down the back of her throat and rounded her eyes trying to gain her bearings. "I did something bad. Really bad! I used Phil's Wizard to replicate myself and now I can't find my other self."

"Crummy bumpers!!" Lloyd freaked ready to hit her, but then stopped himself after appreciating her honesty. "Keely, why would you…. We got to find her! Let's get Phil and Barb and Pim and we'll comb the neighborhood!!"

"Great…" Keely groaned as her potential father-in-law helped her in through the front door of the house. "More running…" She almost stumbled, but Lloyd caught her and helped her into the house. Before them, Pim was stretched out on the sofa before the television watching the show with the twins, rich heiress and hapless candy girl in a Boston hotel. She wasn't a big fan of the show, but she liked mocking the show that aired after it with the teenage girl who hid a life as a pop singer. For some reason, she really liked the show that had been on earlier with the smart-aleck high school student with a new stepsister. Upon sight of Keely, however, Pim grimaced annoyingly, swung her body to her feet and turned to the kitchen to search for something to eat.

"Barbara?!" Lloyd called out eager to clear this predicament and left Keely bracing herself by the sofa. "We got a problem!!"

"We sure do!!" Barbara came down the steps ahead of Phil and Keely and stopped suddenly where she was. Behind her, son and future potential daughter-in-law slightly bumped into her and looked up to the seeming guest in the house. Phil was scrambling to reach his Wizard and Pim looked up first with annoyed surprise and then stifled glee. Keely looked round to the reflection standing with her boyfriend and dropped her jaw in shock. The other Keely widened her eyes in disbelief; her head lightly shaking and trembling at her rival becoming herself. Something was about to happen…

"Lloyd?" Barbara stopped and looked at her husband with Keely.

"Barbara??" Lloyd looked at his wife and son with yet another Keely in their house. Briefly staring apart at each other for a minute, family member and multiple Keelys looked up and across each other and then heard the snickering. Pim had begun chuckling under breath and now was laughing at the mess she had hoped her brother had created.

"I can't believe it!!" She picked up the bowl of popcorn from the kitchen counter and sat down at the kitchen table ready to watch this debacle fold out before her. Would Phil get grounded? Would Keely be leaving him? This was too good to miss! "My idiot brother really screwed up!"

"I didn't create her!" Phil repeated himself. "Keely did, and we have to get rid of her before Hackett or Mrs. Teslow discovers her!" He raised his Wizard to the Keely before him and by his dad.

"No, Phil, don't!!!" Keely raised her hands backing in fear. "I'm the real Keely! That's the fake!!!"

"Uh, yeah, right…" The other Keely rolled her eyes and shook her head denying it. "I think I'd know who I am."

"Phil…" Keely was horrified looking down the end of the pulsating end of the Wizard. "It's me - Keely, your girlfriend! Don't you know me?"

"Oh, please…" The Keely standing by Phil stepped forward looking her replicant over. "I created you."

"No, I created you!!!" The two Keelys were circling each other defiantly. Pim was munching popcorn excitedly as this spectacle became more bizarre. She didn't care which was the real Keely as long as her pure and wholesome brother got to be punished for this. Phil was beside himself trying to think. Which was which? Which one was his Keely, the real one?

"Lloyd," Barbara had crossed over to her husband trying to figure this out this predicament. "What's going on? How is this possible?"

"Wait," Lloyd reacted with a memory that just returned to him. "I've heard of this before. Sometimes, a replicant has an imprint of the memories of the person from which it's been duplicated. They're usually dormant, of course, unless provoked or stimulated. I think it's happened twice before."

"Really?" Phil asked.

"Didn't you ever wonder where Cousin Ziggy got his twin brother?"

"Now, Lloyd," Barbara wasn't sure herself which of the Keelys was the real one. "Surely the Wizard can tell the difference between the two Keelys?"

"Well, sure…" Lloyd now beamed assuredly as both Keelys gasped. "All we need is the anaharmonic matter analyzer attachment…" He now began grimacing and lifting his hands up to his head. "Which I left back home in the 22nd Century!!!"

"This is ridiculous!!!" Pim didn't see the problem and marched forward to both the Keelys trying to differentiate between them. "Zap them both!!!"

"No!" Phil refused to go that far. "The destruction sequence from the Wizard would be fatal to the real Keely; I won't risk that!!!" He again tried to tell his girlfriend from the clone, but they both looked the same, and they both reacted equally unsure about who was real and who deserved to exist. One of them started to say something, became remissive and looked to the other. Barbara tried to think of an answer, but Pim just looked indifferent to the problem.

"Blast them both…" The true nature of the little sister mumbled under breath.

"This is ridiculous!" One Keely raised her voice and stepped to the middle of the room between the kitchen and the dining room. "I remember creating the replicant. I remember the day Phil and I met; I remember Tia, Seth, Owen, Mr. Hackett and everything else!"

"So do I!" The other Keely reacted, walked around her duplicate and stared her down before returning to Phil, taking his hand and looking deeply into his eyes. "I remember the day Phil became my boyfriend and our first kiss. The first time we held hands…"

"The first time we went out." The other Keely marched up and took Phil's other hand. "The first time we studied together, the first time we did anything." She looked at her clone and then back to Phil. "This is a bit of a fantasy for you right now, isn't it?" She whispered in Phil's ear about him surrounded by two Keelys.

"I'm too overwrought right now to enjoy it." He looked back at her. "Well, yeah, a little bit." His mind had a revelation and he looked to his father. "Wait, both Keely's memories would have the exact memories up to the creation of the other. That would be where the memories diverge, and since the replicant went shopping with Keely's mom, the real one would have memories of the movie we saw." He stepped out from between the two Keelys and realized how to tell who was his real girlfriend. "In the movie we saw today, 'Night at the Museum,' what game did Ben Stiller play with the T-Rex skeleton?"

Both Keelys looked to the other, then to Phil and each started muttered incoherently trying to recall the movie separately.

"Fetch!" The Keely closest to Phil reacted. "He played Fetch with one of its rib bones!!! The monkey stole the letter and the keys, Robin Williams was Teddy Roosevelt and Owen Wilson was the cowboy trying to break into the neighboring Roman diorama!!! Oh yeah, and you owe me one large popcorn, buster!!"

"All right!!!" The other Keely pulled Pim closer to her and stole her Wizard from off her. With one finger held on its laser switch, she pointed the device to Pim's head and made her a hostage. "One move and Pim gets it!!"

Phil started dancing before the window as his family and the other Keely held their hands up. Phil meanwhile did a pirouette and started stamping his feet in rhythm while his family realized what he was trying to do. It was a futile attempt and his parents thought it was in bad taste, but it was Pim who held the greatest disgust at her idiot brother's dirty attempt to bump her off. Even if it were just a joke, she'd never forget it.

"You-are-dead-to-me." Pim stressed each word separately. There was a sound to the back of the house and everyone looked to the door in the rear of the kitchen. A brief glimpse of a furry animal vest and Curtis looked up to the intervention a bit unaware of what was happening.

"Okay," He looked to the room full of characters without any interest in what was going on. "Who forget to feed Curtis?"

"I knew I had forgot something." Barbara knocked herself in the head for being so absent-minded.

"Nobody is blasting anyone!" Keely Two backed to the open kitchen door behind Curtis holding Pim by the neck and holding the laser in the Wizard on her. "I am not going down like just some replicant. I am real. I feel, I think, and I exist. I am not giving up my life just because you think I'll expose you. Phil, you should know be better than that. Both of us could have existed. I just can't believe that you would have destroyed but one of me just to save yourself." She fought with Pim a little and stepped with one foot outside the back door.

"But…" Phil carefully advanced on her with his family behind him. "You're not the real Keely."

"Does it matter…" Keely Two started crying realizing how real she had become. "I'll always love you." She lightly gasped and pushed Pim to the floor and bolted through the door for the gate, out the back yard and into the alleyway beyond the wood fence.

"Curtis, grab that Keely!!!" Lloyd screamed out loud.

"Okay…" He grabbed the real Keely.

"The other one! The other one!!!"

"There's another Keely?" He released the real Keely and raced out of the house leading the way with Phil and Lloyd behind him. Barbara lifted Pim back to her feet and they both raced out the front of the house trying to catch the clone. Looking over the fence, Neil Hackett watched the fracas of everyone running loose. Keely and Phil were running up the street as Lloyd sent his wife and daughter into another direction.

"I don't even want to know anymore." He watched the disturbance distantly and mumbled under breath as his tiny dog, Roswell, ran round under his feet.


	5. Chapter 5

PART FIVE

"Guys," Barbara looked up to Keely and Phil entering the house out of breath and limping tiredly to the sofa. "Any luck?'

"No…" Phil dropped dejectedly to the sofa with Keely dropping next to him. "We checked all of Keely's usual spots from the house to the school to our usual restaurants. No dice. It looks like evil Keely stayed several steps ahead of us."

"Don't call her that." Keely responded deflated by the experience. "It's all my fault. I created her. I just never imagined…" She lost her train of thought.

"Hey, guys, guess what?" Lloyd came strolling through the back door. "I found the anaharmonic matter analyzer attachment in the time machine. We had it the whole time."

"That's wonderful, dear." Barbara turned to her son sitting morosely defeated on the sofa, but Keely looked a bit more depressed because it was herself that had possibly ruined the family. "Honey," Barbara sat down on the edge of the coffee table before her future daughter-in-law. "She thinks just like you. She is exactly like you. You both have the same thoughts, same fears, same dreams and the same love." She looked to Phil blushing a bit. "Try to put yourself in her place: if you had been told you shouldn't exist and your life was in danger, what would you have done?"

"I don't know." Keely couldn't think. "Maybe if I had some money, I might have…"

"Money?!" Pim dropped the tub of ice cream from which she had been eating and recoiled in shock. Her booty from the phony charity! When she last counted it, it was almost seven thousand dollars, but as she reached to her secret stash under the sink, she found her metal cookie container and pulled it out on her fingertips. She had a brief gasp of relief to know it was there, and then looked inside to be doubly sure. Where once had been rolls of various dollar bills of every denomination was now a quarter, a few nickels and two pennies.

"She wiped me out!!!" Pim screamed. "She took all of it!!! That blonde bimbo took all my hard-earned stolen cash!!!"

"Money?" Phil and Keely looked at each other with the same thought. Phil was up first as he hit the stairs and stormed up taking the steps tow at a time. Keely was a bit faster this time climbing over him at the top of the stairs and racing to Phil's room. Jumping on the edge of his bed, she flipped over the mattress and grabbed their cigarette box filled with the money for the Aly and AJ tickets. Phil grabbed it from her and shook out a dime, a penny and a Canadian quarter.

"She robbed us too!" He revealed almost crying. "She wiped us out! Forget the concert! Your replicant must have doubled back while we were out after her!"

"It's my fault!!!" Keely sat on the floor next to Phil against his bed and accidentally hit his squashed drums with her foot. "I created that witch! I created her and she screwed us both over, that… that…"

"Just say it…"

"Evil Keely!!!" She sat despondent and deflated then had an epiphany. "I guess that kind of makes me Dr. Frankenstein."

"Where do you think you went?"

"I don't know." Keely looked up blankly trying to think. "I think I'd have grabbed the first bus out of town."

"Hello class…"

It was now a week later, several hundred miles away and Spanish teacher Carmelita Rodriguez stood at the front of her class of Bayside High School Students. She checked her roll by seating chart and turned an eye up toward notes being passed around in back of the classroom. Chelsea Daniels removed her gum from her mouth and Danielle Burnside slumped back for all the boys to see how far she had developed. One of the boys looked possibly stoned while another looked nearly asleep. It was almost time for the school fair and Ben Sturkey did not want stuck in the dunking booth again.

"First up," Mrs. Rodriguez looked up. "I'd like to remind you that this year's fair is this weekend and we still need someone in the dunking booth."

"Good luck getting someone to do it." Someone cracked.

"This week's test is moved to Monday because I won't be here on Friday; I have a dentist appointment." That info brought a few cheers. "But it just means a lot more notes to take and a quiz instead." The cheers turned to groans. "I'd still like to know who drew the island of Atlantis off the coast of my map of Mexico." Anonymous snickering came from the room. "Oh yeah, and let's please take donations to buy a gift for William Samms in the hospital. The Halloween costume party was a big success, but whoever talked him from jumping off the roof and trying to fly in that Batman costume ought to be ashamed of himself." There were more snickering noises as she looked to the boys in the room. "Oh, yes, and let's welcome a new student to finish the year with us. Class, please meet Alyson Michelle Teslow!"

"Hi," The now red-haired Keely Two stood up from the desk near the door and turned to face the class. "I'm Aly, I just moved to Bayside and I'm hoping to make a lot of new friends."

"Hello, foxy lady…" Jake Haskell stopped dreaming of barbecued ribs from the Chill Grill to plan his wooing of the red-haired beauty. The Keely clone grinned back at him while Raven Baxter had a funny feeling she had seen her before.

"Why do I feel like I saw this in a TV show?" She pondered out loud.

"You know," Student Eddie Thomas sat in the front row and leaned forward looking over the new student. "You look a lot like Allison Michalka with red hair!"

"You know, I hear that all the time!!!" The former replicant squealed out loud.

END


End file.
